Path of the Vampire forum

London – May 2019

In the darkest of nights - when all the world closed its eyes and no one was there to see, he let himself mourn for the life he never had the chance to experience. Upon the worn-out couch, between mountains of books that detailed grand adventures – he found himself with tears in his eyes and with shaking hands. In the darkest of nights…he realised the truth, death was coming, and there would be no mark of his upon the earth.

London had been his home for what felt like an eternity, and before now he had felt comfortable in its cold embrace – but something changed. From its place on the mantle his clock struck three and in that second, he came to understand that he was vanishing into the shadows into anonymity. He had to transform from this slowly deteriorating shell of a man…or risk becoming just another nameless grave that no one tended anymore.

“Right,” his eyes removed themselves from the clock and instead turned to the letter in his lap. It was one of the hundreds he had gathered over the years, and normally they made him feel lighter, but not today; no, today the letter filled him with purpose and caused his heart to race inside his chest.

Everyone reached a point in their life when they made a choice that would drastically alter their perception of the world. Most made that choice when they were young, and some even had the chose thrust upon them by those around them. For him, at the age of fifty, it was time to make that chose. “I need some wine..” he did not need to make it sober.

---

My dearest Alexandrea,

I write this letter with a heavy heart. Over the years I have come to see you as a surrogate daughter and while that has given this old man great comfort, it is no longer enough. There is little hope that I shall ever have a family of my own, and while that is a shame, what I find truly distressing is that I shall have no one to gift my shop to.

With every day I grow ever closer to the hands of death, even now as I write this letter, I feel it. My fingers ache from holding the pen, and my eyes are failing me. You are young, so I do not expect you to understand my melancholy, but I hope that you can find some way to understand the decision I have made.

You are my only family at this point. So, after great thought, I have decided to sell my shop here in London and move closer to you. I want to spend my final years by your side. I am aware this may be a shock to you, after all, I am just your fathers’ old friend, but still…I wish to be closer to the person who brings sunshine into my life. Please accept this old man’s wish to no longer be alone in the world, allow me to find a measure of comfort in your company.

By the time this letter reaches your hand I will have already be onboard a plane and heading towards you. I do not expect to see you straight away, but I do hope that you will come and find me – the address I will be staying at is:

I shall be staying there until such time as I am able to find a premise for my shop and I do hope to have the pleasure of your company.

Yours faithfully,

---

With a flick of his fountain pen he signed his name at the bottom of the letter, he then sealed it in an envelope ready to be sent off first thing the next morning.
Harper Rock – June 2019

It had taken him only a week to have his affairs in London dealt with, and then he had hopped onto a plane.

Harper Rock was nothing like what he had thought it would be. It was still lonely, though that could be a symptom of his only having just arrived, it had a life to it that London had lost. Here, in this city, he felt able to picture a future, all he had to do was allow himself the chance to find his peace.

The first three days of after his arrival had been filled with settling into the hotel and scouting out locations for his shop. There had been no time to explore or contact Alexandrea – there had barely been enough time for him to shower in the mornings (not that he would have ever stepped foot outside his room without looking his very best), but eventually he fell into his normal pattern of behavior and found a schedule that worked perfectly for his strange little quirks. He got used to the way the city behaved.

During the day he would get up at 5 am and take a shower, he would have breakfast for 6:30, and then the rest of his day was filled with looking for a building. At night he would sit by the window and look out over the crowd until finally succumbing to sleep for around midnight. It was all very rinse and repeat…except today.

He had risen as he always did – at 5am – and realised that he had come all this way to spend more time with his dear friends daughter…but as yet he had not even had the common decency to phone her to let her know he had arrived, in fact, his phone had been switched off for the last god knows how many weeks..

“Oh, bugger…she is going to murder me..”

With fear, he dug out his phone and switched it on in order to text the woman. He hoped that she would be able to find it in her heart to forgive his oversight.

---

From: Benjamin Michael Ellis
To: Alexandrea
Hello, my dear. Sorry to message you so early in the morning – just thought I would let you know that I have arrived safe and sound in Harper Rock. If you are free this evening, I would be delighted to share a small supper with you.

Best regards,
Benjamin Ellis.[/font]

---

[for_peace][/for_peace]


Alexander Thompson had been a simple carpenter when Alexandrea had been born but by the time she was five, he was a millionaire with a chain of furniture stores. As his fortunes grew, so did his interests. And eventually, his holdings and his travels became international. But his luck wasn't all good.

He had become a widower young and his wife had been taken after a long battle with cancer which might have left the family bankrupt in other parts of the world. And if his wealth hadn't been growing as fast as his poor wife's health had been declining, it probably still would have.

As a single father, he kept his daughter with him as much as he felt was proper and whenever possible included her in his travels. Travels which were mainly to London and always included at least one visit per trip to Mr Thompson’s favourite booksellers.

In the late 80’s and early 90’s, books were still the way that everyone was doing their reading but the technology was changing fast and Alexander Thompson saw a future where books might become increasingly hard to come by. He had, therefore, befriended a talented expert in the field and over the years with the help of that same young man he managed to put together quite a fabulous collection of many ‘one of a kind’ masterpieces. It would have been impossible for a young girl growing up surrounded by such works of art to not love books.

And Alexandrea Quartermaine really loved books.

Her heart still felt as if it was being stabbed with a hot knife when she thought back to all those precious books that had been lost in the fire at her father’s house all those years ago. But she was somewhat consoled in knowing that there was someone else out there who recognised what a huge loss it had been.

Benjamin had been more than a friend to her growing up. He had been like an uncle from as far back as Alexandrea could remember. And as things changed in her life, more like a father. Not that anyone could have replaced Alexander Thompson to his devoted daughter. Even after all his rejections, Alexandrea still thought her father could do no wrong. But there had been a lot of rough years at the end of the man’s life, and the last time that father and daughter had spent together had been spent fighting.

But she still had her Benji. He had been a solid and secure person in her chaotic life up until the time that she died.

Or didn’t die. It was still something Alex wasn’t sure how to word. Back then newly turned vampires were instructed, by those that could be bothered with fledgelings, that they had to vanish from their old lives and break off all ties to everyone who had known them from when they had been ‘human’. But that had been before the word about vampires being real had come out to the world. Such things shouldn’t be an issue to anyone anymore, thank Nox.

Alex hadn’t waited for that change to come about, however. Leaving everything and everyone from your past behind had been the very first ‘rule’ she broke, long before she had joined the 5th column and played at seeing just how high of a bounty she could get while still staying out of the Shadow Realm. It had been the night she met Odin that she couldn’t stay away from dear old Benjamin any longer.

Of course to Ben, Alex would have just been out of touch a lot longer than usual.
At least that’s what she had expected.

Alexandrea hadn’t bothered with faking her own death or anything, she had just quietly taken on a new name and gotten fake papers. And it wasn’t as if she had called him every week on Sunday or anything.

So it had been a bit of a surprise when it had turned out that he had been really worried about her.

It had also made her day. She wore that grin on her face for a week afterwards. It felt good to have someone care about you like that. It felt like family. And family was all Alex had ever wanted.

And with Ben being so far away, it was easy to keep him off the radar of anyone who was hunting her. Keeping her dear friend safe was of utmost importance to Alexandera. It was also easy to tell him everything, the older man was an excellent confident and she trusted his advice a great deal more than most. It’s always easy to trust someone when they are thousands of miles away. It’s also a lot more easy to keep someone safe. At least when it came to Harper Rock.

Was it wrong that Alex was always secretly glad that one of her all-time favourite people always said no to her invitations to visit? Benji was safer where he was.

And then his letter came and Alex had a cow.

Planes beat snail mail hands down. She was livid and having had not heard from him yet she was also terrified. There was no way that he wasn’t in town already. Unless something had happened. She hacked the airlines in her head and found his name after a few false starts. He had gotten on the plane and the plane had arrived. She hacked into West Hotel’s bookings next and was at first enormously relieved to learn that he had indeed checked in.

So then why no word from him that he had arrived? This was not a safe town that they were in. Her already overactive imagination ran wild. She had been to that hotel before and seen plenty of unsavoury characters about.

The next thing she did was rattle poor old Harry’s cage. As the Police Commissioner of Harper Rock, she demanded that her thrall have Benjamin found and watched by over by his best undercover in the department. They were not to detain the man, just shadow his every move and make sure that nothing that could harm him came anywhere near him. She was to be notified immediately once Benjamin had been found.

And so she was. And he was reported to be just fine. And after she quietly made sure that Ben’s room at the West was fully paid for, she waited. And she seethed. And as the days passed and it turned into a week, so too did the allurist’s rage grow. From a tornado, it grew into a hurricane. And still, she just waited for word to arrive.

Except for that one time she went by his room while wearing a stranger’s face, that is. He had said to come by, after all. But as he walked by her in the lobby that night and was none the wiser, Alex found herself unreasonably pissed. It might not have been rational, but the blonde was hurt that he seemed to be having a good time in her town without her. After all, she HAD been inviting him to visit her for years. Sure, she had always been secretly hoping he would turn her down but he had no way to know that...

And by the time she did finally hear from Benji, it had been after another long night of worrying and wondering wtf. The sun hadn’t been up long enough to bother her too much yet and she did also have the ability to walk in the daytime when she wanted... but she was pissed. Too pissed to trust herself with a reply when she was tired and cranky.

She put ‘Uncle Ben’ on the backburner and pouting like a spoiled child, she went to bed. Let him wonder about her for a while. After having been awake for days out of sheer willpower, Alex was out like a light in moments... and literally dead to the world.